And today, April 2, we're having a Google Funeral double-header: both Google+ (for consumers) andGoogle Inbox are being laid to rest. Later this year, Google Hangouts "Classic" will start to wind down, and somehow also scheduled for 2019 is Google Music's "migration" to YouTube Music, with the Google service being put on death row sometime afterward.

We are 91 days into the year, and so far, Google is racking up an unprecedented body count. If we just take the official shutdown dates that have already occurred in 2019, a Google-branded product, feature, or service has died, on average, about every nine days.

Some of these product shutdowns have transition plans, and some of them (like Google+) represent Google completely abandoning a user base. The specifics aren't crucial, though. What matters is that every single one of these actions has a negative consequence for Google's brand, and the near-constant stream of shutdown announcements makes Google seem more unstable and untrustworthy than it has ever been. Yes, there was the one time Google killed Google Wave nine years ago or when it took Google Reader away six years ago, but things were never this bad.

For a while there has been a subset of people concerned about Google's privacy and antitrust issues, but now Google is eroding trust that its existing customers have in the company. That's a huge problem. Google has significantly harmed its brand over the last few months, and I'm not even sure the company realizes it.

Google products require trust and investment

Google is a platform company. Be it cloud compute, app and extension ecosystems, developer APIs, advertising solutions, operating-system pre-installs, or the storage of user data, Google constantly asks for investment from consumers, developers, and partner companies in the things it builds. Any successful platform will pretty much require trust and buy-in from these groups. These groups need to feel the platform they invest in today will be there tomorrow, or they'll move on to something else. If any of these groups loses faith in Google, it could have disastrous effects for the company.

Consumers want to know the photos, videos, and emails they upload to Google will stick around. If you buy a Chromecast or Google Home, you need to know the servers and ecosystems they depend on will continue to work, so they don't turn into fancy paperweights tomorrow. If you take the time to move yourself, your friends, and your family to a new messaging service, you need to know it won't be shut down two years later. If you begrudgingly join a new social network that was forced down your throat, you need to know it won't leak your data everywhere, shut down, and delete all your posts a few years later.

There are also enterprise customers, who, above all, like safe bets with established companies. The old adage of "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" is partly a reference for the enterprise's desire for a stable, steady, reliable tech partner. Google is trying to tackle this same market with its paid G Suite program, but the most it can do in terms of stability is post a calendar detailing the rollercoaster of consumer-oriented changes coming down the pipeline. There's a slower "Scheduled release track" that delays the rollout of some features, but things like a complete revamp of Gmail eventually all still arrive. G Suite has a "Core Services" list meant to show confidence in certain products sticking around, but some of the entries there, like Hangouts and Google Talk, still get shut down.

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Developers gamble on a platform's stability even more than consumers do. Consumers might trust a service with their data or spend money on hardware, but developers can spend months building an app for a platform. They need to read documentation, set up SDKs, figure out how APIs work, possibly pay developer startup fees, and maybe even learn a new language. They won't do any of this if they don't have faith in the long-term stability of the platform.

Developers can literally build their products around paid-access Google APIs like the Google Maps API, and when Google does things like raise the price of the Maps API by 14x for some use cases, it is incredibly disruptive for those businesses and harmful to Google's brand. When apps like Reddit clients are flagged by Google Play "every other month" for the crime of displaying user-generated content and when it's impossible to talk to a human at Google about anything, developers are less likely to invest in your schizophrenic ecosystem.

Hardware manufacturers and other company partners need to be able to trust a company, too. Google constantly asks hardware developers to build devices dependent on its services. These are things like Google Assistant-compatible speakers and smart displays, devices with Chromecast built in, and Android and Chrome OS devices. Manufacturers need to know a certain product or feature they are planning to integrate will be around for years, since they need to both commit to a potentially multi-year planning and development cycle, and then it needs to survive long enough for customers to be supported for a few years. Watching Android Things chop off a major segment of its market nine months after launch would certainly make me nervous to develop anything based on Android Things. Imagine the risk Volvo is taking by integrating the new Android Auto OS into its upcoming Polestar 2: vehicles need around five years of development time and still need to be supported for several years after launch.

I think we're seeing a lot of the consequences of Google's damaged brand in the recent Google Stadia launch. A game streaming platform from one of the world's largest Internet companies should be grounds for excitement, but instead, the baggage of the Google brand has people asking if they can trust the service to stay running.

In addition to the endless memes and jokes you'll see in every related comments section, you're starting to see Google skepticism in mainstream reporting, too. Over at The Guardian, this line makes the pullquote: "A potentially sticky fact about Google is that the company does have a habit of losing interest in its less successful projects." IGN has a whole section of a report questioning "Google's Commitment." From a Digital Foundry video: "Google has this reputation for discontinuing services that are often good, out of nowhere." One of SlashGear's "Stadia questions that need answers" is "Can I trust you, Google?"

One of my favorite examples came from a Kotaku interview with Phil Harrison, the leader of Google Stadia. In an audio interview, the site lays this whopper of a question on him: "One of the sentiments we saw in our comments section a lot is that Google has a long history of starting projects and then abandoning them. There's a worry, I think, from users who might think that Google Stadia is a cool platform, but if I'm connecting to this and spending money on this platform, how do I know for sure that Google is still sticking with it for two, three, five years? How can you guys make a commitment that Google will be sticking with this in a way that they haven't stuck with Google+, or Google Hangouts, or Google Fiber, Reader, or all the other things Google has abandoned over the years?"

Further Reading

Yikes. Kotaku is totally justified to ask a question like this, but to have one of your new executives face questions of "When will your new product shut down?" must be embarrassing for Google.

Harrison's response to this question started with a surprisingly honest acknowledgement: "I understand the concern." Harrison, seemingly, gets it. He seemingly understands that it's hard to trust Google after so many product shutdowns, and he knows the Stadia team now faces an uphill battle. For the record, Harrison went on to cite Google's sizable investment in the project, saying Stadia was "Not a trivial product" and was a "significant cross-company effort." (Also for the record: you could say all the same things about Google+ a few years ago, when literally every Google employee was paid to work on it. Now it is dead.)

Harrison and the rest of the Stadia team had nothing to do with the closing of Google Inbox, or the shutdown of Hangouts, or the removal of any other popular Google product. They are still forced to deal with the consequences of being associated with "Google the Product Killer," though. If Stadia was an Amazon product, I don't think we would see these questions of when it would shut down. Microsoft's game streaming service, Project xCloud, only faces questions about feasibility and appeal, not if Microsoft will get bored in two years and dump the project.

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Ron Amadeo
Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work. Emailron@arstechnica.com//Twitter@RonAmadeo

Not necessarily shutdown, but renamed, was Google Drive (now Teams and Backup & Sync) and the deprecation of the Drive application. That was a nightmare transition.Then there are the phones... after two years, typically, no updates and new model support only.

I hope Google is up to something great that justifies abandoning so much. As it stands, I am very reluctant to rely on any Google products in fear they'll be discontinued when Google gets bored. As a developer, I know this sentiment is building the development communities. I cannot see how this will not hurt Google's profits. Google has some work to do to rebuild trust.

Yup, and the problem is you never know what they will keep , drop or just stop developing for. Anything can be abandoned at any time. Then there is the not sure which 5 of their 11 messaging apps are still supported.

I’m worried that one day I wake up and google says they’re going to start charging for my free grandfathered google apps groups. I only use it for email and drive/docs. But having to move my email and domains elsewhere would not be pleasant if the fee was more than $50/yr.

The thing with Google's obsession with new projects at the expense of old is that it's such a hassle having to switch apps. And after you've made the switch you have to become comfortable with the new workflow and the inevitable missing features. Besides, being on a trendy new app that has Google's full attention risks it being constantly messed with so that you never get a chance to settle into it before the UI is inexplicably upended or features are removed, then re-added, then changed to work almost but not quite completely unlike how it used to work.

Google music shutting down is the one that's a pain for me. It's been more or less reliable for a long time now. I uploaded a substantial percentage of my music collection to their service so it was easy to have access while I travelled. Which lead me to even rebuying some tracks on their store rather than transferring old cassette tapes and vinyl into the digital realm.

It is interesting how Microsoft seem to have avoided this stigma, even from people like myself who were burned pretty hard by the shutdown of Windows Phone and later, Groove Music. As the article notes, nobody's questioning their commitment to new ventures like xCloud despite this history.

I wonder if it's just because of Google's sheer pervasiveness on the Internet nowadays. Once upon a time it was fashionable (and reasonable!) to hate Microsoft for dodgy tactics like browser bundling, and I think the core of it was that everyone knew these strategies had nothing to do with consumers and everything to do with desperately trying to keep people on board the MS mothership. Similarly, Google now dominates a lot of our personal tech space in the way that MS and Windows once did, and the backlash at anything that appears designed to benefit them rather than us is being fueled by the fact that it feels personal.

There's a reason Microsoft despite not really ever being terribly innovative continues to make truckloads of cash to this day. Outside a few outliers, they own their product line even when it's likely a mistake and a cash loser. They do this for this exact reason....companies want to know if they're throwing their hat into a ring that it's not going to be tossed back out at them chewed up. Office 365 has it's share of hiccups but you can be fairly assured that it's still going to be a viable product line in a decade and likely much more, thus worth the time for your infrastructure to adapt to. I wouldn't know what to do with a Google environment. Much of the product line can be quite good and flexible, but trust.....I just don't know.

I think this is the folly of the "new office" prototyping of just random, open concept, creativity first thinking. Don't get me wrong, there are some serious benefits to that and it sounds fun....but sometimes you need to know when to pivot. I'm not sure Google has ever known how to properly do so. They control absolutely massive pieces of the market but even with that control I never feel like they really know where they're going with it.

I hope Google is up to something great that justifies abandoning so much. As it stands, I am very reluctant to rely on any Google products in fear they'll be discontinued when Google gets bored. As a developer, I know this sentiment is building the development communities. I cannot see how this will not hurt Google's profits. Google has some work to do to rebuild trust.

I think the more likely reason is that they have a bunch of different teams working on different (but overlapping) things without talking to each other, and executives who basically only looks at profit and costs when determining who lives and who dies.

I have been using Google Voice for my Voice mail for ages. Dreading the day when it goes on the chopping block.

I'm a semi-recent former Googler so will add only this: the company is adequate at cancelling things before release but not fantastic; it is terrible at cancelling things early during development. I always felt this was partly because company culture makes 'no' almost a dirty word, and partly because the money fountain makes it an unnecessary one.

Was a regular user of Google Reader, such a popular tool; boggled me when they shut it down.Several Android App development communities are/were active in Google+, that's gone awayNow I am seriously pissed that Google Play Music, my favourite music app for its minimalistic interface is also going away soon..

Or Google should simply be a platform and not bother competing for specific services.

I actually give them a pass for consumer focused products, but they have the same tendencies when it comes to business and developer focused products and libraries. There it is absolutely toxic. No one sane builds a business on google products.

Despite that developers keep using their products and building on top of them. Google Flutter makes absolutely no sense business wise (why support iOS???). Yet people come up with ludicrous propositions like "it's the basis for Fuchia"... No it isn't. It's a part of a mockup which is pretty darn far from a product. Building your product on top of this is a recipe for disaster. I know, we built stuff on App Engine and while it's technically not dead it would have been roughly the same effect. The code we wrote on app engine is no longer deployable and we can't post updates without a huge overhaul of our code/build. It was cheaper to rewrite everything and move to a proper host than try to fix the code/build (actually saved us so much money).

Google is great in search and OK in mobile OS's (which its making closed source through google play) everything else is a coin toss. You will get similar results from a volatile startup than you will get from Google. Yet developers keep picking stuff up simply because "it's google".

Thank you for writing this as this is something I've been yelling in to the void about for some time now. For me it started with Google Apps. I created my own Google Apps domain for myself to play around with and to give family members email addresses with a custom family named domain. Then Google castrated it by never allowing it to get any new Android features so I had to abandon it after a couple of years of use as my main Android account. Lost purchased items as well. God forbid they allowed a one time transfer or anything. I've also relied heavily on Google Voice and I keep waiting for the ax on that as well. Now I get to wait in limbo as they try to figure out how to kill Google Play Music. This one is a big one for me since I heavily use the upload your library feature and I also have an All-Access plan for myself and family members. I cannot wait to hear how it's ruined when I get forced on to YouTube Music.

It is interesting how Microsoft seem to have avoided this stigma, even from people like myself who were burned pretty hard by the shutdown of Windows Phone and later, Groove Music. As the article notes, nobody's questioning their commitment to new ventures like xCloud despite this history.

I wonder if it's just because of Google's sheer pervasiveness on the Internet nowadays. Once upon a time it was fashionable (and reasonable!) to hate Microsoft for dodgy tactics like browser bundling, and I think the core of it was that everyone knew these strategies had nothing to do with consumers and everything to do with desperately trying to keep people on board the MS mothership. Similarly, Google now dominates a lot of our personal tech space in the way that MS and Windows once did, and the backlash at anything that appears designed to benefit them rather than us is being fueled by the fact that it feels personal.

MS released Windows Phone 7 in 2010 and will have supported Windows Phone for just over *9* years when they finally drop it at the end of the year.

Groove Music was the latest version of MSN Music which was around in 2004 which would put its lifespan at around 14 years

I just stopped using my Windows 10 Mobile device a couple of weeks ago. I'll be the first to say MS could have tried harder but they definitely gave it a good try compared to Google's efforts with some of these products

There's a fundamental cultural problem at the root of all of this, Google values innovation over maintenance. That's fine when you're a startup, but Google is not a startup, they're the second or third largest technology company depending on how you measure. The arc of people's careers at Google are apparently still dependant on which cool new projects they've worked on lately, with product maintenance almost seen as a black mark. It's going to take a fundamental mind shift at the core of the company to fix this, and without strong central leadership I'm not sure how they even begin.

Developers gamble on a platform's stability even more than consumers do. Consumers might trust a service with their data or spend money on hardware, but developers can spend months building an app for a platform.

Yep. I'm about as google-product centered as they come. Nexus, pixel, chromebook, inbox, voice, etc. I even taught Dart to my CS classes. I'm really interested in learning Firebase, but have pretty much given up hope that it will still be around in a few years - not because of anything to do with Firebase or current product messaging/branding, but because of how inconsistent Google has been with their products more generally.

This kind of sentiment in somebody who's pretty dedicated to them does not bode well for their ecosystem when the vast majority of users are less so.

Google's modus operandi is to throw shit up against the wall and see what (profitably) sticks. Even if it's for short term profit. They don't ever stay in a project for the long game because of profits. And because of profits they don't even stay in it for the short game either.

It sucks but they've embraced the silicon valley's "innovate or be steamrolled" motto. Certain things, like phones, NEED long term support even if the company doesn't plan to continue with the program long term.

Not necessarily shutdown, but renamed, was Google Drive (now Teams and Backup & Sync) and the deprecation of the Drive application. That was a nightmare transition.Then there are the phones... after two years, typically, no updates and new model support only.

Looking at Google Cemetery, I"d forgotten half of those products existed. Sadly, this is nothing new for Google, they've got a decade plus history of killing things off and you have to be very careful using products from a company with such a reputation.

The thing with Google's obsession with new projects at the expense of old is that it's such a hassle having to switch apps. And after you've made the switch you have to become comfortable with the new workflow and the inevitable missing features. Besides, being on a trendy new app that has Google's full attention risks it being constantly messed with so that you never get a chance to settle into it before the UI is inexplicably upended or features are removed, then re-added, then changed to work almost but not quite completely unlike how it used to work.

Google music shutting down is the one that's a pain for me. It's been more or less reliable for a long time now. I uploaded a substantial percentage of my music collection to their service so it was easy to have access while I travelled. Which lead me to even rebuying some tracks on their store rather than transferring old cassette tapes and vinyl into the digital realm.

Wait, what?! They're shutting down music?! Seriously? This is news to me - and not good news either; I have uploaded tens of thousands of songs there.....

I wonder if a similar trajectory is in store for the Google News website/App?

It was redesigned, apparently, to wedge AI/Machine Learning into the product and achieve other goals like bursting people's filter bubbles by forcing stories and sources you never wanted to see into the news feed and almost everyone who used/loved the previous design of GN intensely dislikes the new version. In fact you can still go to the Google News Help Forum and the threads on "How do I get back the old version?" and "New Google News sucks!" are still growing almost a year later.

And as far as I can tell, other than maybe?, some minor bug fixes absolutely no response from Google or the team behind Google News has been forthcoming to all of the constructive and deeply negative feedback and zero changes to the website or the app to resolve some of the major pain points reported against the new design. Maybe there'll be another redesign announced at Google I/O 2019 or maybe this is another dead service walking?

I've been using Microsoft OneNote for sixteen years now. It's kind of a mess at the moment, what with the switch to the online brand and the ongoing muddiness of the way it handles notebook locations, but I'm sure I will be able to go on using this for another couple decades.

In that same time frame, Google created Google Notebook in 2006, which was clearly inspired by OneNote and Evernote. I remember thinking I should transfer my notes to Google Notebook, because I figured Google was going to be around forever (unlike Evernote, lol.) But I liked the OneNote interface better and never got around to it.

Google killed Notebook in 2011. The Notebook notes were all shunted to Google Docs.

Google then launched Google Keep in 2013. It's less useful but it's still functioning for now, five years later. So maybe it has a future! Or maybe Google's sharpening their knives in the back room. Who knows?

If someone asks me what Note taking app to use, I'm going to recommend the one that's going to still be here five years from now.

I don't understand their aversion to having paying non-enterprise customers. The Old Reader seems to have survived by just having a premium version, so I don't see why they couldn't have done the same with Google Reader, or spun it off or something.

A couple of years ago I wrote myself a script for copying the entirety of my blog from Blogger, just in case that goes too. Migrating away from Calendar would be totally painless. From Gmail, slightly less so.